The Wedding Dress

The Jade Star actress and everything she stood for made Jared furious. It wasn’t thoughts of steamy, mindless sex that had wrecked Jared’s sleep. What kept him up all night was knowing McDaniel would be making a nuisance of herself around the dig site, distracting his crew of students. The thought made him resolve to exhaust the woman so badly this morning she’d crawl up those tower steps begging for mercy, too tired to turn the heads of kids like Davey Harrison.

Entering the castle, Jared blinked, trying to accustom his eyes to the dimness, the dawn’s haze that filtered through the arrow loops doing little to relieve the shadows. But he knew this site as well as he knew the rough lines and angles of his own face. By instinct, he crossed to the spiral stairs, taking fiendish delight in the dead silence as he strode up the stone risers. Perfect. His prey must be sound asleep.

As he neared the landing to Emma’s tower room, his eyes narrowed in anticipation. No point in knocking. There was no door. One more realistic tidbit from the time of LadyAislinn that Jade Star would have to get used to. A complete lack of privacy.

An unexpected image stung Jared: the tabloid headlines he’d seen in the airport. And he wondered for an instant what it would be like to have his most personal failures splashed across a gossip rag. When his marriage had crumbled he’d been able to bury himself in his work, lose himself in a past far less agonizing than losing Jenny had been. But the press could’ve had a field day with what he’d done if anyone besides Jenny’s father and friends had cared enough to read about it.

Don’t be an eejit. Butler crushed any sympathy he felt. Emma McDaniel had chosen the attention, the fame, the money, the fans clambering around her. What had Davey said? Every men’s dorm room had posters of the woman plastered on the wall? Probably poses of her half-naked. What else could Emma McDaniel expect besides this feeding frenzy in the press?

Well, she was about to find out some men weren’t impressed by a centerfold-worthy body or a lush red mouth or big brown eyes. The castle history claimed Lady Aislinn was distraught when Sir Brannoc and his mercenaries arrived? By the time Jared was through with Emma McDaniel, she’d welcome an invading army catapulting stones at her tower wall!

Jared crossed the threshold, the larger windows cut in the more defensible top of the tower spilling rose-tinged rays of dawn across the chamber. “Time to get up.” Jared let his voice boom against the stone walls. “Can’t waste daylight when candles are so expensive.” Not to mention the cresset lights, rush lights and candles gave a far fainter light than audiences conned by costume dramas on the movie screen would ever have guessed.

What, not so much as a groan from Her Royal Highness? Jared strode to the bed, gave it a sharp kick to shake it. “This is your wake-up call—” he began, then froze. The piles of furs had barely been touched, the pillow still fluffed, no hollow formed by a sleeping head. The bed hadn’t been slept in.

What the hell? Was it possible the prima donna had already taken off for greener pastures? No. He couldn’t be that lucky. He hadn’t heard a car start and God knew he would have. He’d heard every other damn sound around camp last night. She could hardly have walked all the way to the main road hauling that heavy suitcase.

His brow furrowed with a niggling of worry. Of course, somebody who came from L.A. wouldn’t be stupid enough to hitchhike. It would be dangerous for any lone woman and downright suicidal for a celebrity.

There was no way McDaniel had gone that far, he reassured himself. More likely she went for a walk. But he hadn’t seen a soul on his way to the castle. And over the years he’d loved this place, worked on it, he’d developed a sixth sense about anyone prowling around the space. He would have noticed. Unless she’d gone wandering around the cliffs in the dark and fallen. Impossible, he told himself sharply. He would have heard her scream.

His father-in-law’s white-bearded face swam in his memory, the man who had once been Jared’s mentor, so cold, so fragile, aged a hundred years since the last time they’d seen each other. Don’t pretend you even noticed what was happening to my daughter until it was too late. You always were a selfish man, Jared, lost in your own world…

Last night Jared had been lost in his own world again. Just like he’d been with Jenny.

He rushed toward the window to look outside, but halted at the tabletop that had been empty the last time he’d seen it.

The rough wood now held a cluster of things carefully arranged. The ink and quills he’d packed in the chest, two sheets of parchment filled with writing and one object he’d never seen before, completely out of place with the medieval decor. A cheap purple, glitter-encrusted frame so dinged-up it might have gone a few rounds in the barrel of a clothes dryer. A thin crack snaked across the glass, dividing the photograph the frame held in two.

Jared picked up the frame, held it to the light. Christmas lights glowed against a backdrop of Norfolk pine so fresh he could almost smell the needles. What was obviously a family clustered before it. Two sets of parents wrangled a herd of sugar-overdosed children who were flashing sticky smiles at the camera. A sweet-faced redhead with dreamy eyes nestled close to a tall dark-haired man who looked about the right age to be Emma’s father. Another man cradled a toddler in his arms, while a woman with restless blue eyes and a crop of Emma’s wild dark hair laughed up at him.

Enthroned in a leather chair, a man of about eighty leveled a hawkish gaze at the camera. Emma, at least twenty in the picture, curled up on the old man’s lap, her face so fresh and blooming it shoved hard at even Jared’s cynical heart.

Leaning over Emma’s shoulder, a young man with features more perfectly sculpted than Orlando Bloom’s beamed as he held up her left hand and pointed to the flash of a diamond ring.

This picture with its ugly frame was the thing Emma had fought like a wildcat to keep from her suitcase? A family photograph with her ex-husband front and center? It was the last thing Jared would have expected someone like her to value.

And how had she spent last night? Obviously writing something. Two letters from the look of it. Jared glanced down at the pieces of parchment. Despite a dozen ink blots and painfully cramped script, he could see Emma had worked damned hard with the period materials at her disposal. Dear Mom, one page read. The other: Hey Jake…

Jake?

Jared hastened to put the frame back down. Hell, he’d almost started feeling sorry for her. But she already had some other man writhing on her hook—besides green college kids like Davey.

He almost walked away. Could hear the grandmother who’d helped raise him scolding from the grave. Jared Robert Butler, for shame. Don’t you even think of reading that lady’s mail. Your father and I taught you better manners than that.

Tried to teach him would be more accurate, Jared amended. He’d been the despair of both of them more often than he cared to remember.

In the end, his insatiable curiosity won out as it always had. But what better way to obliterate any shreds of empathy he might be tempted to feel toward the actress than reading her tale of woe? Line after line of how Jared had abused her. What a bastard he’d been. He’d been generous on that count anyway, given her plenty to bitch about.

Jared picked up the sheets of parchment, scanning Emma’s letters. He frowned. Who the devil had written this thing? Because it sure as hell couldn’t have been the pampered Emma McDaniel. She’d made her miserable flight sound like an adventure, her arrival at the castle so cheerful and full of enthusiasm Jared had to shake his head to try to clear his confusion. She’d warned this Jake to be on the lookout for a box she’d sent—a surprise for her mom—and promised to bring him back a kilt.

Anybody reading these letters would think the woman was having the time of her life, if one tiny detail hadn’t betrayed her. Two watery splotches blurred the ink where she’d scrawled something about “hugs and kisses.” Teardrops. Jared stared down at the marks, suddenly damned uncomfortable.

“So the lady cried,” he growled aloud. “Why should you care?”

Good question. But somehow, deep down in his gut, he did.

Had he made her so miserable? So desperate that he’d driven a woman to risk…Jared’s jaw hardened. Why should that be so hard to believe? His abominable temper had done plenty of damage before.

Guilt a decade old ground like a fist into his stomach. He pushed open the window frame, half-afraid he’d find Emma McDaniel lying like a broken doll on the rocks below.

Nothing. The cliffs were empty. He breathed in a sigh of relief. But he’d barely taken a step out of the alcove when voices drifted up.

He leaned out the window, pain vanishing in cold, clean anger as he took in the scene below him. Emma McDaniel, resplendent in medieval garb, strolled beyond chains that marked places as dangerous and out of bounds, while Davey Harrison stumbled along the precipice after her, his eyes so glazed with adoration Jared doubted he would even know he was dead until he hit the rocks below.

Maybe not, chief, but what a way to go, Jared could almost hear him say. Brash words and yet nothing Davey said could mask the almost invisible cracks Jared knew were inside the kid. Fissures akin to the ones in the medieval clay pitcher Jared and Davey had pieced together with painstaking care on the boy’s first stay at the site.

Damned if Jared was going to let someone like Emma McDaniel breeze into the lad’s life and carelessly dash it to pieces again.

Hands knotted in fists, Jared charged down the tower stairs, ready for battle.

EMMA BREATHED IN the sweet scent of her first Scottish morning, her thin leather shoes growing damp from the dew clinging to the tussocks of grass and springy moss around her. The cluster of tents at the far end of the broken curtain wall stood dead silent.

Thank God no one was stirring. Especially Jared Butler. Her cheeks burned. She didn’t even want to think what the genius archaeologist would say if she told him she’d come out this morning to search for a ghost.

Especially since she’d already broken one of Mussolini the Scot’s cardinal rules. Don’t be wandering around where you don’t belong, he’d roared at her in his sardine can of a car. I won’t have you contaminating my dig site.

His? The land had been deeded over to the National Trust before Butler had been born, from what her research had said. And yet the Scotsman acted as if it were his own private kingdom.

Maybe the castle wasn’t his exclusive domain, but the dig was. Even Barry had warned her to cooperate with Butler any way she could; the archaeologist’s goodwill was vital to the film.

Well, at least she’d hedged her bets by obeying Butler’s second warning, she rationalized. Obviously this section of the castle grounds wasn’t part of the excavation. There wasn’t a shovel in sight.

Of course the danger signs marking the rear of the castle as off-limits were a different matter. Strung at intervals on a thick chain between two concrete posts, the warnings were giant-sized, with big red letters.

“Nobody has to know I came back here,” Emma rationalized as she made her way onto the narrow, rocky band that topped the cliff guarding the castle’s back. “I’ll just nip over to the cliff edge, take a quick look around and then beat feet out of here before anyone is the wiser.”

If only it were that simple. Instinct made her want to hurry, afraid with every minute that passed that any remaining clue regarding the apparition might wash out into the sea. But she had to watch every step, gingerly testing each piece of moss-slick stone to see if it could bear her weight.

Breaking her neck on her first day at the castle would be a very bad idea. Especially when she thought of how pleased Jared Butler would be if she ended up out of commission.

But she’d never been able to resist mysteries like this one. Never quite shaken her fiercely held childhood belief in spirits who wandered the night and the gifts they could bring.

Ghosts or fairies like the ones in old Irish stories her Aunt Finn had told her, carrying warnings of impending doom or promising love so strong the person who won it would never die. After all, hadn’t a ghost brought Aunt Finn into her life? Aunt Finn, who had brought Emma’s mother back to stay.

Who knew what kind of luck the knight of the sea might bring?

Emma swore under her breath as her ankle wrenched, just enough to startle her.

“Ms. McDaniel?” Behind her a worried voice cracked the way Drew’s had in middle school. Emma all but jumped out of her skin, tripping over the unfamiliar hem of her dress. The smooth leather soles of her shoes slipped on the damp rock and would have dropped her smack on her backside if a skinny young man of about nineteen hadn’t grabbed her around the waist at the last possible instant.

She flailed, fighting to regain her balance. It only took a heartbeat for her instincts to kick in, and she murmured a grateful thanks to the skills she’d gained from stunts she’d done herself in the Jade movies. The beet-red young man couldn’t have let go of her any faster if she’d caught his hands on fire.

“You shouldn’t—shouldn’t sneak up on people like that!” Emma gasped, pressing one hand to her thundering heart. “You scared the life out of me!”

“I, uh, yelled your name, Ms. McDaniel. I can’t figure out why you couldn’t hear me.”

Emma’s own cheeks warmed. Rueful, she smiled. “I guess I was…lost in imagining…”

The most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen… Of course he was gorgeous, and charming and, well, perfect. Because he didn’t really exist. At least not anyplace except her imagination.

Maybe that was the key, just like her best friend in L.A. often said. I like my imaginary men best.

Emma couldn’t stifle a smile as she pictured Samantha’s eyes alight with her signature biting humor. Of course, the woman wrote books, so she spent plenty of time with imaginary heroes. She was still coming up with creative places to help Emma hide Drew’s body.

Emma started, realizing her rescuer was staring at her. Oh, Lord. She knew that starstruck look, and she absolutely hated it.

“I’m Emma,” she said, extending her hand while she flashed him a warm smile.

The youth gave her hand a quick squeeze, then let go as if he expected her to disappear with the pop of a bubble, like Glinda in the Wizard of Oz. “Trust me, ma’am,” he said. “There isn’t a guy on earth who doesn’t know who you are.”

“This face is hard to forget.” Emma twisted her features into the outrageous grimace she’d perfected to make her mom laugh.

The kid nearly choked on a surprised burst of laughter, coughing and sputtering so badly Emma had to pound him on the back.

“I…I’m David Harrison. Everybody calls me Davey. This is my…fourth summer…working with Dr. Butler.”

Nothing like inviting the bad fairy to the princess’s birthday party.

She’d pretend he hadn’t mentioned Dr. Sexy Mouth. “Davey. Thanks for keeping me on my feet.”

Davey’s brow furrowed. “I wouldn’t wander around back here if I were you. Dr. Butler doesn’t like it.”

Damn if that didn’t tempt her to do cartwheels across the outcropping.

“The rocks are always slick and some are unstable,” Davey added earnestly. “One of the undergrad students was playing around the first year the site was open and broke an ankle. Ever since, Dr. Butler has insisted this is off-limits. I’m surprised you didn’t, er, well, read the sign. Or notice the chain…”

Emma frowned. “Nobody ever comes back here? But I thought I saw…” A ghost. A warrior. A man. Oh, give it up, Emma.

Davey regarded her intently. “You thought you saw what?”

Emma flushed. The last thing she needed was this kid telling Butler she was hallucinating. The jerk would probably call the studio and insist she take a drug test.

“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking…” Emma forced pure mischief into her smile. “Pity the castle doesn’t have a ghost. Just think what a great ending that would make, mentioned in the closing credits.”

“The script already has Lady Aislinn defeating a battle-hardened knight with a broadsword. Why not add one more ridiculous lie to the story?”

Emma stiffened, glanced over her shoulder. Butler. It wasn’t fair that such an asshole should sound so sexy. Not to mention how well he fit into those pants. Thank God he’d had the rotten fashion sense to pull on some kind of olive drab oilcloth coat to hide most of the green T-shirt that almost matched his eyes.

“Here he is at last,” she muttered, “the historical genius.”

Davey turned, completely flustered as he saw the man charging toward them. “Dr. Butler,” Davey stammered, the poor kid looking as if he’d just been caught burying chicken bones in one of the dig site’s graves. “I…I was just—”

“Davey was keeping me company.”

“Entertaining spoiled starlets isn’t in his job description. Last time I checked the schedule, Harrison, you were supposed to head the team sifting through the dirt where we found that intaglio ring. Or do you want me to assign it to someone else?”

“No.” Davey looked like Santa had just smacked him. “I’ll get right to it.” But instead of bolting in the wake of Butler’s wrath, the youth squared his shoulders and turned to Emma. “He’s not usually like this. He didn’t get much sleep last night.”

Jared’s cheekbones darkened. “What does that have to do with anything?”

The youth gave him a look full of empathy. “When that happens you’re a whole lot better dealing with dead people than live ones, I’m thinking.”

Jared growled a curse.

“Just remember how you felt after the accident, Dr. Butler.”

The archaeologist compressed his mouth into a hard, white line.

Emma tried to get her mind around what Davey had hinted at. Butler suffering guilt over Angelica Robards’fall from the horse? But then, it was only logical he’d feel terrible that the woman was on the injured list. Butler had made up his mind months ago that she made an acceptable Lady Aislinn.

Butler sucked in a deep breath reminiscent of Emma’s yoga instructor. “What does the accident have to do with…?”

“It’s the only reason I can figure you’re acting this way.” Davey faced Emma, exuding quiet dignity far beyond his years. “Goodbye, Ms. Mc…”

“Emma,” she corrected.

Davey gave her a ghost of a smile. “Emma.”

“I’m so glad to meet you, Davey,” she said, touching the boy’s arm. She hated to send Davey away with that worried expression on his face. Sensed the boy was serious beyond his years. She flashed him her grandfather’s ornery grin, made sure her eyes sparkled with mischief as she leaned toward Davey and spoke in a stage whisper Butler was sure to hear. “It’s nice to know someone around here gets up at the historically-accurate hour.”

David didn’t get the joke. “Oh, no, ma’am,” he began earnestly, “the chief—”

“The chief can speak for himself,” the Tyrant of Craigmorrigan said. “Get to work.”

Davey shrugged and headed out of the line of fire, casting worried glances back over his shoulder.

“Keep your eye on the rocks, lad,” Jared ordered. “I don’t have time to take you to hospital!”

Davey’s head snapped forward, eyes fixed front and center.

“Nice move, Butler.” Emma tossed her curls. “And now that you haven’t got anybody else to bully, maybe you could start the job the studio hired you to do. Unless you want to go back to bed?”

Dangerous, Emma. Thinking of Jared Butler and bed in the same sentence was a very bad idea. Especially since, at the moment, he looked all craggy and primitive, like one of those highlanders in the romance novels her aunt Finn loved to read. And with muscles like those, the jerk would have no problem flinging a woman over his shoulder and carrying her up the tower stairs. Of course, Emma would definitely scratch his eyes out the minute he dumped her amidst the made-in-China furs on her bed.

She brought herself up short. How had she ended up in Aunt Finn’s book? Luckily, Butler didn’t have a clue about Emma’s unruly train of thought.

“I’m always the first person awake on this site and the last person asleep,” Butler said.

“Not this morning, Dr. Sunshine. I’ve been up since…well, I wouldn’t know the time since my Rolex is off-limits. But the moon was just gorgeous out my tower window. I curled up on that charming stone bench and watched the sea for ages.”

Butler glanced up at the window Emma knew looked out from her room. Did the man actually look uncomfortable? What was that about? Certainly not concern for her. The Scot had all the sensitivity of her L.A. neighbor’s pit bull.

“Everything I read on medieval times said people were up at first light,” Emma said. “So I didn’t want to miss my curtain call.”

Lines carved deep between his brows and Emma was delighted to sense his irritation that she’d actually done some background research.

“So you can read then?” Butler taunted. “I was beginning to wonder, considering you obviously passed right by the danger signs I’d posted.”

“Yes, well, I’ve spent my whole career catapulting across volcanoes and climbing sheer rock walls with hordes of natives chasing after me. I thought strolling across a few rocks was no big deal.”

“You thought?” Butler took a step toward her. Damn if she was going to back away. She leaned deeper into his personal space instead, scowling back with Jade’s take-no-prisoners glare.

“Yes,” Emma said crisply. “I thought. I do it all the time.”

“Well you’re not doing it here. Do you hear me? No thinking. You do what you’re told, when you’re told. If I put up a sign that says jump, you ask off which cliff. And there is no ghost. Got it? I don’t give a damn what kind of Hollywood candy floss you want to stick all over this story. These are historical figures you’re dealing with now. Real people who deserve some respect.”

“Respect?” Emma echoed in mock astonishment. “Are you sure you know the definition of that word or did they forget to ask that question on your way to getting your Annoying Genius badge in Boy Scouts?”

“I wasn’t a Scout.”

“Pity. It’s been an amazingly civilizing influence on my cousin Will. Scouting just might have taught you manners. And as for there not being a ghost at the castle, that’s something I’d love to remedy. You’d make a great ghost, Butler. One little trip off the cliff and my problems would be over. Then I could just have you exorcised or banished—or whatever psychics do to make ghosts disappear.”

The corner of Butler’s mouth curled, so smug she wanted to slap him. “Priests exorcise demons. And psychics are a load of codswallop.”

Be careful, Emma, a voice inside her warned. Don’t let him guess…what? That she’d spent last night imagining a ghost? That part of her would always believe in magic. Even now, after her marriage lay in ashes, she wanted to believe in a love so powerful that even centuries couldn’t kill it. She wanted a happily-ever-after for the remarkable woman who had once lived in this castle.

Why couldn’t she keep herself from asking? “You don’t believe in ghosts?”

Shrewd green eyes flashed. “I’m a scientist. What do you think?”

“I’m not supposed to think, remember?” she reminded so sweetly she hoped Butler would get tooth decay. Rotten teeth. That was the perfect way to defuse the magnetism of Butler’s criminally sexy mouth.

White teeth flashed, his smile all crooked. It was flawed, damn it. Asymmetrical. She knew people in L.A. who would have raced to a plastic surgeon to have something like that corrected. Butler should have looked awful. Instead he looked like an X-rated dream.

There’s nothing you like about this man, Emma, she told herself. Remember that. Not one thing.

Except that libido-blistering smile.

Damn. Butler was watching her as if he knew what she was thinking. Those penetrating eyes swept her from head to toe.